Director Report Card: Wes Craven (1981)

4. Deadly Blessing

“Deadly Blessing” is the third part of what I like to refer as Wes Craven’s Savage Wilderness Trilogy. Starting with “Last House on the Left,” continuing into “The Hills Have Eyes,” and concluding here, each details acts of violence in rural areas. Strengthening my theory is that most of the director’s films from this point on would be set in suburban, urban, or even exotic locations. The thematic trilogy also clearly shows the director’s evolution. His premier and sophomore efforts are rough and nasty. “Deadly Blessing” is his most competently shot and made film yet. To show his complete transition into a fully commercial filmmaker, Craven only co-wrote “Deadly Blessing.”

The film follows Martha, a normal girl who lives near a community of Hittites, an Amish analogue. Her husband, a former Hittite, is killed mysteriously, prompting two of her friends to come and keep her company. The murders continue, the girls are haunted by strange nightmares, the Hittites claim Martha is an Incubus, and members of the religious community struggle against sexual and social repression.

“Deadly Blessing” is somewhat uneven as a horror film. There are some effective horrific sequences. The scariest moment takes place in the barn. It features several nice jump scares, like black shutters slamming suddenly over the windows. A character running into a spider web or the spider climbing over her exposed cleavage will probably make arachnophobes squirm. The scene pays off fantastically when a corpse on a rope suddenly drops into frame. Spiders show up again in an effectively creepy nightmare that plays on common fears. The moment was memorable enough to make the poster. It’s the only time that the musical score actually elevates the horror.

Sadly, most attempts to be scary fall flat. James Horner’s score is deeply overdone. Ominous “Omen”-style chanting features heavily when Horner isn’t indulging his love of sweeping strings and horns. The music frequently undoes any tension the movie could have created. The director made another odd choice. During two of the attacks, the action lapses into slow motion. It’s a bewildering and distracting decision. The movie piles on the jump scares near the end. There’s blood in milk, a scarecrow at the door, and a casket full of chickens. All of these moments border silly and are very loud. Craven’s direction is usually solid, making good use of crash-cuts and slow pans. However, one moment features a cheesy fade-to-black which makes me think Wes had been spending too much time in TV-Movie-ville.

The movie willingly indulges in the clichés of the, at the time, still young slasher sub-genre. There are multiple POV shots from the killer’s perspective. Lovers in their pure bedroom are stalked by an unseen killer. Later on, a peeping tom is stabbed in the back, punished for catching a glimpse of naked flesh. A stand-out moment near the end is directly patterned after the Dead Boyfriend urban legend. The image of a black gloved hand, knife brandished, stabbing through a convertible’s cloth-top recalls Italian giallos. When a trail of flames is following a car, the driver isn’t smart enough to just jump out. Adding the perfect cherry on the slasher movie clichés sundae, the movie even throws in a Useless Authority Figure.

“Deadly Blessing” sometimes plays like a prototype for “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” A moment were a girl is menaced in the bath by a snake was almost recreated shot-for-shot in the more famous film. Personally speaking, while all the spider stuff creeps me out, I have no fear of snakes so the scene doesn’t work for me. Your mileage may vary on that one, I guess. There are other signs of “Elm Street,” like the repeated nightmare scenes or young girls discussing dreams of menacing strange men. Those looking for further Craven call-outs will notice a cameo from Beast and a brief appearance of “Summer of Fear.”

Maren Jensen of “Battlestar Galactic” fame, stars in her last role before disappearing from film work. Jensen is never overly charismatic, flat once or twice, but eventually proves likable. If nothing else, the film uses Jensen’s brilliant blue eyes nicely. Sharon Stone spends most of the movie nearing a nervous breakdown. It’s hard to read the performance and the character eventually becomes irritating. Susan Bruckner is easily the most likable of the cast. Bruckner has great chemistry with Jeff East. Their romance is a highlight and Barr’s subplot, a man bristling against his religious convictions, is frequently more interesting then the horror storyline. Lisa Hartman and especially Lois Nettleman come close to overdoing it, with their country accents. Michael Berryman plays another mentally afflicted man-child. He’s a little comical, running around screaming “Incubus!,” but he works better when interacting with kids.

Ernest Borgnine received a Razzie nomination for his performance which is very unfair. It might be easy to criticize him, especially when delivering lines about God’s nostrils. However, he’s actually quite good. He plays a man that control his community through religious prosecution and threats of violence. I love how he turns on a dime, being a kind father one minute and a wide-eyed religious fanatic the next. Borgnine believes his words, imbuing the fire-and-brimstone sermons with real intensity.

The script is somewhat muddled. The plot doesn’t start rolling until 22 minutes in and an opening and closing narration is obviously tacked-on. I dislike the gender bender plot twist. It comes out of nowhere, makes little sense, awkwardly fits into the film’s themes, doesn’t provide a satisfying motive for the murders, and might honestly be offensive to transgender viewers. Horror always has an uneasy relationship with superstition and religion, criticizing those beliefs while frequently playing them straight. “Deadly Blessing” wants it both ways, a critique of overbearing religion that also uses those ideas for cheap scares. The screenwriters also misuse the word incubus, a very male demon that is used to refer to a group of women.

If nothing else, “Deadly Blessing” has got a hell of a last minute jump-scare. I really doubt you’ll see that one coming. Only available for years as a grainy VHS tape, or internet rips of a grainy VHS tape, “Deadly Blessing” was recently released on DVD and Blu-Ray for the first time. The film has never looked or sounded better. While it’s unlikely that the movie will ever be reevaluated as a lost classic, it’s not without merits. [Grade: B-]   

Director Report Card: Wes Craven (1977)

2. The Hills Have Eyes

 “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” solidified the back woods, inbred cannibal clan as a staple of horror films. To this day, horror films continue to rip it off and reference that great film. Four years after his incendery debut, Wes Craven contributed the second most iconic addition to that particular trope. Taking its inspiration from Hooper’s film and tales of the (probably fictional) Sawney Bean clan, “The Hills Have Eyes” proved that “Last House on the Left” wasn’t a fluke, that Craven really did have a knack for the visceral and the horrifying.

The film shows Craven’s thematic interest evolving as well. “Last House on the Left” was only partially about family while, in “The Hills Have Eyes,” it becomes a major theme, one that would carry throughout many of the director’s films. The story revolves around the Carter family, who get stranded while dragging their mobile home through the desert. Once there, they quickly come into conflict with a brood of possibly mutated cannibals that make the desert their home. There are deliberate parallels between the two families. Both have a strong, traditional father and a subservient mother. A young son trying to prove himself features in both. Big Bob Carter gives his son a gun, telling him he’s in control while he’s gone. Meanwhile, the cannibalistic Poppa Jupiter allows young Pluto to go on a raid. The parents squabble while the children struggle against their fathers’ authorities. Both families loose loved ones, motivating the action in the latter half of the film. And what does Jupiter’s Brood do to decentralize the rival family? Kill the father.

The main reason I love “The Hills Have Eyes” is because the characters are strong, realistic, and likable. The Carter family is introduced quickly during an early scene, each one walking off the trailer, up to and including the dogs. Bob Carter is lovably crotchety. His expletive ridden declarations and stories about his time as a police officer are deeply entertaining. He has a funny relationship with his wife, trading loving barbs. Later, the mother requests a prayer, in a moment that seems deeply real. Later, Mom, Bobby, and the daughters set the lunch table, discussing their rich history together. Craven’s character writing has never been quite this strong since.

The performances contribute to the cast being such fully realized characters. The actors playing the youngest Carter children probably give the best performances. Robert Houston starts out seeming to be your typical teenage boy but, as the situation gets worse, he reveals more depth. The scene where he confesses to finding their dog’s dead body is probably his best moment. Susan Lanier is excellent as Brenda. She plays her character’s traumatized state. I especially like when the lights going out causes a screaming fit. “Traumatized” is something of a default state for most of the cast. Martin Speer, as step-son Doug, shows real grief when he discovers two dead bodies. Though Virginia Vincent has less to do as the Carter matriarch, she has two stand-out moments, freaking out upon spotting her husband’s corpse and a dazed, sad discussion on her death bed. Dee Wallace, well on her way to scream queen status, is funny and tough, though she to exits the film too soon.

On the cannibal’s sides, James Whitworth is slightly over-the-top as Poppa Jupe but appropriately animalistic. Michael Berryman, horror’s most distinctive leading man this side of Rondo Hatton, is a little too broad at times as well but he fills the role of the youngest son trying to prove himself very well. Janus Blythe plays Ruby, one of the film’s more complex characters. The conflict and sweetness shows through in her voice. Finally, character actor John Steadman has a great part as the remorseful grandfather, successfully getting his mouth around some wild, fantastic dialogue.

The director has evolved in other ways since his debut. “Hills” is significantly better constructed then “Last House.” The movie is fantastically paced, taking its time to set up the characters and holding off on revealing the villains fully for quite some time. The first overt moment of horror isn’t until 23 minutes in and, even then, it’s still another 15 before things truly get rolling. Craven’s direction goes a long way towards establishing the isolation of the desert. The film opens with long pans over the jagged desert hills. There’s another fantastic shot of Doug, the camera pulling back, showing him screaming alone in the darkness of the wilderness. The rough edges are still present, as the editing is sometimes abrupt.

Unlike the folk-pop shenanigans of “Last House,” this film has a real score, provided by Don Peake. Multiple ominous chords pulsate on the soundtrack, adding to the tension. Occasionally, there’s even a good, ambling beat. Even then, the score is sometimes too seventies, the funky tones distracting from the story. For those looking, Wes’ improvised booby traps are strongly represented, playing key roles during the climax.

Craven’s stronger direction, writing, and cast make “The Hills Have Eyes” a good film but what makes it a great horror film are a series of startling, fantastic sequences. The old man’s monologue about Jupiter’s birth is highly quotable and leads to one of the greatest jump scares in horror history. Few cinematic villains are given as effective an entrance as Jupe is. Pluto gets a great entrance too, siphoning gasoline under the lover’s nose. The home invasion is rightfully infamous for its intensity. Mars cuts a grotesque figure, squishing ground beef between his fingers, milk dripping down his chin, chomping the head off the family parakeet. He asserts his authority as the dominate son by raping Brenda, causing Pluto to go on a frenzied rampage through the trailer. The sexual assault is not as lingering or disturbing as what happened in “Last House” but the close-up on Brenda’s crying face is certainly upsetting. Tension builds fantastically during the home invasion sequence, the confined area lending an acute sense of realism. The music ramps up, screams mixing in, murders taking place before our eyes. The tension becomes almost unbearable until the moment when the gun clicks, out of bullets. There are other good horrific moments. A torn out Achilles tendon here, a finger jabbed in a stab wound there, but the movie never quite tops the attack in the trailer.

“The Hills Have Eyes” is a note-worthy example of the “proto-slasher,” the horror subgenre that would explode just a few years after the film was released. The dogs detect the evil before anyone else does. The iron-lined hills make radio transmission impossible, the 1970s version of cell phones without signals. While the movie doesn’t rely on them too much, there are several jump scares. A trademark of the slasher, a young couple so into each other that they don’t notice the mad killer right outside their window, might have originated here.

The movie is sometimes accused of being campy. I feel the content of the picture rejects that. However, the movie is badly dated in some ways. The fashion, which includes multiple cut-off shorts, hip-hugger jeans, and a fierce porno ‘stache, hasn’t aged well. An important character in the film is actually a dog. Beast the German Shepherd is smart enough not only to seek revenge for the murder of his mate but also to carry his fallen enemy’s walkie-talkie back to his family. Mercury is an incredibly goofy character and, thankfully, not in much of the film.

Aside from the focus on family, there’s another important theme here. Like “Night of the Living Dead” before it, “The Hills Have Eyes” is an attack on the status-qua of “polite society.” The desert savages are refereed to as animals repeatedly. Poppa Jupiter delivers a creepy monologue to the decapitated head of Bob Carter, talking about watching his world crumble and devouring his children. The outsiders have come for us and are going to literally eat the rich. By the end though, Craven has made the point that there’s little separating the civilized Carters from the savage mutants. The ending was originally more upbeat, showing the surviving family members accepting Ruby into their life, the outsider and the civilized people meeting on common ground and looking pass their differences. However, Craven opted instead for one of his trademark closing nihilistic images. A man stabs another to death brutally, looking directly into the camera, the scene fading to blood red around him. It’s not subtle but it makes its point quite succinctly, that there’s a savage inside of all of us.

 “The Hills Have Eyes” was a big success on the drive-in/grindhouse circuit. Though the film has never found huge mainstream success, aside from the mostly pretty good remake, it holds strong as a cult classic and seminal film in the horror genre. [Grade: A-]

Director Report Card: Wes Craven (1972)

After covering John Carpenter earlier in the year, it was only a matter of time before I  inched my way through the filmography of the other great horror director to come out of the 1970s. Wes Craven's career is mostly a collection of several iconic, genre-busting features and a bunch of forgettable stuff in-between. He started out as an auteur before transitioning into a work-for-hire filmmaker, frequently trying to recapture the success of his biggest hits and not always successfully. He has even, sometimes, struggle with the label of "horror filmmaker," trying to break out of the genre once or twice. All of that and more will be covered here so let's get started.

1. The Last House on the Left

A former English teacher and son of a devout Baptist seems like an unlikely candidate to create a shocking, disturbing, and influencal exploitation horror film like “The Last House on the Left.” Or maybe not. After all, Wes Craven and producer Sean S. Cunningham (the two men who, separately, would launch the biggest slasher franchises of the eighties.) had previously made a soft-corn porn flick together. Actually watching the movie, Craven’s literary roots become more obvious. Criticize the film for its crude presentation or cruel story turns but “The Last House on the Left” has more on its mind then just rape and revenge.

The movie’s unlikely source material also points towards its deeper goals. The story is directly inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring.” The Collingwoods, Mom and Dad, prepare a birthday party for their teenage daughter Mari. Meanwhile, along with her friend Phyllis, Mari heads off to see an Alice Cooper-style shock rock band. The girls’ decision to stop and buy some pot unfortunately puts them in the path of psychopath Krug and his gang of sadistic, violent crooks. They kidnap the girls, take them off into the woods, and spend the day torturing, raping, and murdering them, leaving their parents and a pair of incompetent cops to worry hopelessly. After the killings are done, Krug’s decision to stop at a near-by home sends the two groups on a collision course of violence.

From a technical position, “Last House on the Left” is occasionally clumsy. Craven’s direction is sometimes stiff, like in the early scene where Mari talks with her parents, the camera barely moving. The editing is even worse, scenes stumbling over each other, cutting through music or even dialogue. Some of the acting suffers too. Sandra Peabody and Lucy Grantham aren’t always believable. Their early girl-talk needed some more polishing and Peabody doesn’t sell the scene of her pleading with her captive. Even Cynthia Carr and Richard Towers as the parents, generally solid actors, seem to underperform their grief upon discovering their dead daughter. The silly, hippy folk soundtrack is frequently distracting, jiving too badly with the events on-screen.

Craven’s script occasionally falters as well. Krug’s crew have their background dropped in an early radio announcement, an example of awkward exposition. The events the entire last act is built around are slightly contrived. Why would a group of vicious murderers stop by the first house they see after killing two girls? Why would two confused, frightened parents let them stay? The criminals having nightmares late in the film, flashbacks to earlier in the movie, just comes off as padding. Of course, none of the movie is more awkward then the comic relief cops. Yeesh, these guys. The movie cuts from brutal rape and murder to a pair of cornball, broad slapstick deputies wandering around the back roads or falling off a chicken truck. Why are these scenes in the movie at all? Craven wanting comic relief is one thing but these moments show either total discomfort with the subject matter or nosy executive meddling.

Watching “Last House on the Left” this time, the movie seems to be about contrast. Early scenes discuss the cultural divide between child and parents. The girls have come of age, sexually, as shown in the waterfall scene, drinking wine and talking about the boys they like. Mari’s father even acknowledges that their little girl is turning into a woman, telling her mother that the girl’s interest in scary rock bands is “The kid’s way of saying she’s grown up.” The movie is almost a coming of age story gone horribly wrong. The parents pin up a birthday party banner as their daughter in trapped in the killer’s apartment. Mom bakes a cake while Krug moves in for the kill. Craven leaves the first rape off-screen, focusing on Mari’s face as she watches her friend get assaulted. Cut to: Mom and Dad canoodling in the living room. Usually, the contrast adds a cruelly ironic touch. Sometimes it is used awkwardly, such as when the violence in the forest cuts back to those stupid comic relief cops. As poorly as it’s used, even the cheesy music plays against the violence and depravity.

There are a handful of other themes bouncing around inside the movie. Krug and his family live in near poverty, while the Collingwoods are well to do suburban folk. The dinner scene is the only time the movie’s awkwardness is probably intentional, two groups of people from very different social classes making clumsy conversation over their meals. This reading makes the criminal’s violence almost an act of social rebellion. How much is this movie about gender? Mother seducing one of the men who raped her daughters seems to suggest it is at least partially. How else can you interpret a woman falsely seducing a man and then castrating him?

It’s about family too, presenting two very different clans. In one, the father is open, allowing his daughter to explore her youthful identity. In another, the dad controls his son with heroin and eventually coerces him into suicide. Craven is also commenting on the futility of vengeance, as the forlorn final moments reveal. The parents’ revenge might be righteous but, in the end, it’s all for naught. They can’t bring their daughter back. Craven was also openly influenced by news reports of Vietnam and the Manson murders. The shattering of sixties ideals those events signaled cast a long shadow over the whole film.

I throw all this out here simply to show that “Last House on the Left” is not just the trashy, sleazy exploitation flick some claim it to be. But an overly analytical approach ignores that Wes Craven made a horror film that lives up to that description. Krug is a truly terrifying villain. David Hess is committed to making the character as despicable a human being as possible. There’s a frightening intensity to his delivery, one where he rarely raises his voice. Exhibit A: The infamous “piss your pants’ sequence, the first sign the film isn’t going to cut away or pussy-foot around. The girls stripping before their captors is uncomfortable and their humiliation is further confounded by the crooks laughing at their suffering. A chase scene is perhaps the film’s only traditional horror moment, especially the way it climaxes with a machete-wielding maniac stepping into frame. A few weird sound effects can’t distract from the grimy, sickening horror of the disemboweling scene. Peabody’s screams make the pain of the name-carving scene brutally evident. The rape scene that follows is almost unbearable. Craven focuses on victim and attacker’s faces, preventing any movie-slick eroticism, drawling the horror of the situation into harsh reflect.

Despite the ghastliness of the crime, Craven still shows that Krug and company are human. After murdering Phyllis, they slowly walk away, heads down, unsure of what they have done. After the rape, everyone looks at Krug with disgust. He seems depressed as well, aware that perhaps they have pushed it too far. In the movie’s most poetic, disquieting moment, their victim descends into the lake, music playing over. Music which cuts out just as the gun fires, the girl’s body sinking beneath the water. Not long after that, the villains have their own cathartic wash in a lake.

Compared to the intensity of the middle section, the carnage of the last act can’t help but feel slightly functionary. Even if we do get to see the first of what would be many improvised booby traps in a Craven film. The chainsaw sequence, loud and lumbering, is probably the best example of the film’s tonal shift. “Last House on the Left” is effective because it is so rooted in gritty, unnerving realism. Though the title was chosen strictly for its catchiness, it winds up representing the film’s aesthetic: The horror happens at the last house on the left. In your neighborhood. In your backyard. Not in some foreign land or distant, gothic manor. This could be your home. After making that point so effectively, a chainsaw murder pushes thing slightly over the top.

The movie spawned controversy, was frequently censored or even outright banned, led to numerous low-budget rip-offs (and an eventual, overly-slick remake), all while transforming Wes Craven into a horror filmmaker. The film is rough, in quality and content, and doesn’t always overcome those flaws. It remains shocking and truly unnerving, earning its reputation as “forbidden cinema.” [Grade: B]